Spitefulness and humor styles

The aim of the present study was to examine the association between spitefulness and humor styles. To examine this association, 539 participants completed self-report measures assessing their spitefulness, basic personality dimensions, and humor styles. Spitefulness was positively correlated with the injurious humor styles (i.e., aggressive humor and self-defeating humor) and negatively associated with the benign humor styles (i.e., affiliative humor and self-enhancing humor). Taken together, these findings show that spiteful individuals are more likely to belittle, degrade, and harm others and themselves by employing injurious humor styles. These findings extend our knowledge regarding the connections between personality traits and humor styles. •Spitefulness was positively associated with injurious humor styles.•Spitefulness was negatively associated with benign humor styles.•Associations between spitefulness and humor emerged even when controlling for basic personality dimensions.